A Weary Way
by OldFashionedGirl95
Summary: In which Susan Pevensie, once of Narnia, now of London, flees reminders of her past and begins a new life across the ocean. Part One of my three-part Susan arc, "And Then What Happened?".
1. Chapter 1

**New AN: Newly tweaked as of 11-15-11. I've added the epigraphs, changed the initial description of Nat, and given it all a new title. Many thanks to King Caspian Seafarer, WillowDryad, and Laura Andrews for their help with the sequels, which are coming along.  
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**Original AN: This is, according to my father, merely a prologue. I wrote it as a sequel to my yet-unposted story of Susan's redemption, and I normally don't post unfinished work, but I was anxious to get it up. I may take it down if I decide I don't want unfinished works lying around. I am hard at work harmonising Part Two with Part One, but I make no promises other than that Susan will be redeemed. "Nat Cunnan Spela" is Old English for (as near as I can figure) "One who does not understand stories."**

****Disclaimer: Though others officially own all rights on Susan, I believe I am perfectly within my rights to tell her story (now that she is gone) as she told it to my grandmother, and as my grandmother told it to me****

"_O, you are men of stones!  
>Had I your tongues and eyes, I'd use them so<br>That heaven's vault should crack. She's gone forever!  
>I know when one is dead, and when one lives.<br>She's dead as earth."_

_~ King Lear, .257-261_

_Distance hurts us,  
>And the vault severe of vast silence;<br>Where fancy fails us, and fair language,  
>And love leaves us, and light fails us<br>And Mars fails us, and the mirth of Jove  
>Is as tin tinkling. In tattered garment,<br>Weak with winters, he walks forever  
>A weary way, wide 'round the heav'n.<em>

_~ C. S. Lewis, "The Planets" _

In the year 1949, there was a serious accident on British Railways. Of all who died, nine are remembered best: an unmarried man (aged sixty-one) and lady (aged sixty), a married couple (ages unknown), three of their children (aged twenty-two, nineteen, and seventeen), the children's cousin (aged sixteen), and his friend (also sixteen).

I never met any of those nine, but I later knew one who was not on the train, and called her "Aunt Susan." She told all the neighborhood children stories of her childhood (and wonderful stories they were) but she told only me the story of her adulthood.

She counted herself nearly twenty and one years of age when the train crash came and her entire family "passed on" (as those who paid their respects liked to say) "to a better place." Though her family had considered her empty-headed and rather silly, she was a very pretty young woman and quite popular in society, with a circle of admiring girls and a gaggle of fawning suitors. Toward the latter she was rather cool, accepting their gifts and attentions, letting them think what they would, but never allowing any closer than arm's length. This was Miss Susan Pevensie of London, and while the world never saw her without a calm smile, no one could say if she was happy.

After that drizzly, gray day in 1949, no one dared ask. Miss Pevensie, social queen, disappeared from public view for several weeks. It is understood that after receiving the news, she wept all night, and then arose and dressed in black. She had been playing at adulthood. Now it was time for adulthood in earnest. She saw all the property and most of the effects sold and moved in with her nearest relatives, Mr. and Mrs. Harold Scrubb. Certain effects she did not sell. Miss Plummer had left a leather book expressly for her, and this (after a long look at it) she directed sent to a certain professor, acquaintance of one of the dead.

After several weeks, when she reappeared to society in black, her face wore its usual calm and its expertly applied color, but the smile was gone. Many of her admirers and suitors had drifted away, but some remained faithful, and one of her former suitors, who had not been heard of for awhile (I think he'd been off to war), returned to her circle. I believe his name was Nathan Wright, but she always referred to him as "Nat." Her brothers had never taken to him (but they never liked any of Susan's suitors), and Lucy had once muttered something about "boys with absolutely no imagination." Aunt Alberta sniffed and thought he was terribly commonplace, but said that Susan could do worse. He was a steady, quiet boy who didn't mind silence, and he and Susan got along well.

He began talking of marriage perhaps six months after the crash. He was not the first in Susan's life to have broached the subject—she had long ago lost count of the proposals offered her—but he was the first in a very long time whom she didn't immediately refuse.

"Don't ask me now, Nat," she said. "I'm not ready to talk of marriage." He waited a month before bringing it up again, and again she put him off, but he was patient, and waited.

At some point during all this, Susan received a manuscript in the mail from Oxford with a note asking for advice; she sent it back unread with the words, "Do what you wish with the manuscript, but please do not ever contact me again regarding this subject." She thought that was the end of it.

The summer passed with an uncaring beauty. Susan worked in a library—the hours were long but quiet—and though she didn't give Nat as much attention as she might have, he stuck around. He brought up marriage from time to time, but Susan was still too numb to consider it, and he seemed willing to wait.

Several things changed that fall. I believe it was the second half of October when the first occurrence came. Susan went to market one day, and as she was checking out, the clerk said, "Susan Pevensie? How funny. My children just read a book about four children named Pevensie—Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy. Funny, how things work sometimes, isn't it?"

Susan's eyes widened and she (Miss Susan Pevensie, Queen of Small Talk) mumbled something inane and got out of there. But it happened again. Perhaps two weeks later, she went to the dentist, and of course as soon as her mouth was propped open and invaded by metal hooks, the dentist began to make small talk. "So, Susan, do you have siblings?'

"Ysmmf—nmmf."

"How many?"

Oh, for heaven's sake. "Eeee."

"Three?"

"Ymmf."

"Okay, you can spit now. What are their names?"

Why did he have to ask these questions? She hadn't spoken of her family in months, and she didn't want to start now. "Peter, Edmund, and Lucy."

He began work again, thinking now. He raised an eyebrow and said, "How strange. My children just read a book about four children—" Not again. "—named Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie. Have you heard of it?"

Susan shook her head—too dangerous to nod.

The dentist shrugged. "It was a charming children's story. I never imagined it might have been inspired by a real family."

Susan sat up suddenly, spit in the basin, and said, "I do not speak of my family. Ever. If you persist, I shall leave."

The dentist blinked, and blinked again before saying, "Oh, pardon me. Very well."

Susan lay down again and the dentist worked in silence for the rest of the visit. She remained agitated all day. Nat seemed nervous when came to walk her home that evening, but it may have just rubbed off on him. "What's wrong, Susan?" he asked finally.

"Why, nothing," she said. "Is something the matter?"

"No—not really." Then, after a bit of silence, he began to talk, more rapidly. His office was transferring him to America—to New York State—and he was to leave in a month, and wished Susan would reconsider and marry him and come with him.

And as soon as he finished speaking, Susan said, very quietly, "Yes." He was quite surprised by that, but she went on. "But we must have a very small wedding, and you must never speak to me of my family."

Both the acceptance and the terms surprised him, but neither seemed unreasonable, and so it was decided. They were married perhaps two weeks later, and the realization must have crossed Susan's mind, if not during her preparations then perhaps in the chapel, that she had never imagined she would be having a small wedding. When she was a girl—and an image unbidden of a columned hall with four thrones arose in her mind—she had envisioned a wedding that perhaps would have rivaled Queen Victoria's. She would have walked to the front (down a double row of centaurs at salute) on her elder brother's arm. Her younger sister, laughing and golden-haired, would have stood behind her with flowers and her younger brother, solemn and dark-haired, would have performed the ceremony. The mischievous, tousle-headed little boy who lived nearby and sometimes teasingly called her "Mum" would have presented the rings, and she and her prince would have kissed to the cheers of hundreds.

Later in Susan's life, she had imagined a wedding less spectacular, but one still a major social event. She would walk down the aisle (between rows of friends and family standing in salute) on her father's arm. Her younger sister, laughing and golden-haired, would stand behind her with flowers and her brothers, smiling and solemn, would stand behind her groom. The stuffy, spoiled cousin who often called her stuck up would perhaps present the rings, and she and her groom would kiss to the cheers of dozens.

Everyone she had ever envisioned at her wedding was now gone.

She was robed not in the cloth-of-gold nor gowned in the shining white of her dreams, but in a tasteful wool suit. She walked down the short chapel aisle on her uncle's arm. Nat's solemn sister and red-headed brother were their attendants. No one presented the rings, for even the rambunctious little boy who had once teased her had died long ago. The kiss was heralded by seven.

It was not the wedding of her childhood dreams. It was, however a wedding which left her as married as any other, and if Nathan K. S. Wright was neither the shining knight of her earlier dreams nor the debonair beau of her later fancies, he was a good man, he loved her, and he would take her away from all the questions. A week or two after the wedding they sailed for America, and soon enough they had settled down in a small town in Upper New York State.

So it was that Miss Susan Pevensie began a new life as Mrs. Nathan Wright. She found work again at the town library. "You need to talk to people," Nat told her, and, slowly, she began to try. The children's department was short-staffed, and rather reluctantly, she took on the weekly story hour. After the first one, Nat came home and found her crying. He tried to comfort her, but she only shook her head when he asked what was wrong. How could she say that a tousle-headed, blond boy who couldn't sit still had brought her nearer to tears than she had allowed any reminder of her family to do? How could she explain that only long years of diplomatic experience enabled her to hold back the tears until she reached the safety of home? How could she when she could hardly articulate it to herself?

It was a week before she would enter the children's section. It was three weeks before she gave in to the pleadings of the overworked children's librarian. "But absolutely no fairy tales," she whispered fiercely, reshelving a book and swallowing hard.

"Very well," responded the other librarian. "No fairy tales."

_~ finis pars primus ~_


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Quite a few people put this story on alert, but I have posted the second part, "Winter Passed," as a separate story, so here's a little excerpt**** for you. The rest can be found on my page under the title, "Winter Passed." **_  
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_Aunt Susan was nearly twenty-one when she inherited the book, but when she looked at it, she seemed to hear an echo of the cry she had once prayed desperately never to hear. "The Sovereigns are dead! Long live our Queen!" It was the cry of a people grieving, a people searching for hope, but she had no hope to offer, and she turned away, closing her eyes to the tears, and ordered the book sent to a professor in Oxford—an old friend of Professor Kirke's._


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Another little excerpt for the story-alerts. This one is from "Wrath Ended," which is the story of that mysterious "Prince Something-or-other" from the end of "Winter Passed." "Wrath Ended" will be going up soon, so keep your eyes open, and let me know what you think.**

"But as we ran forward to engage the enemy, I thought I saw one of the lords stoop over our fallen king, as if to stab him in the back, before attacking the man Peter."

The youth had grown restless during the account and now rose quickly. "Thank you, uncle," he said, rather coolly. "You will see me off tomorrow?"

The man rose also, and laid his hand on the boy's arm. "I tell only what I saw."

The boy pulled away. "You slander my father and his lords, accusing my father of usurping his throne and speaking more highly of a foreign boy than of he who was your king." He stared out into the night, listening to the waves on the shore. "I will avenge my father on the foreign upstart."

He turned away quickly, but the older man called after him, "Beware, my son. Beware of blinding yourself to the truth."


End file.
